How long must the majority who love birds and other wildlife put up with the few gamekeepers and landowners who are bent on destroying for the sake of their own greed. Landowners get the ear of the government. Not a vote winner Tories. I will never vote for you again because you considered destroying our wildlife and listened to the rich.

VICTORY!
Richard Benyon has been outed as the partisan friend of the bloodthirsty shooting classes that he is!

Once people get together to let these people know that they're not getting away with it, they soon back off. Excellent internet campaign - let's have more of them!

This idea has now benn dropped by Defra and the Tories, well done all.

i am disgusted that Defra who have responsibility for our wildlife should target first the badgers and now the buzzards, which will be blasted out their nests, if he has his way, for having the temerity of reducing by a minute fraction the number of pheasants. Shame on you Defra and shame on the rest of this shambolic, unfair and divisive Government. Even Margaret Thatcher would not have been party to the ideas they are dreaming up and inflicting on all who are not part of the favoured elite. The recession has been the perfect excuse for them to plough through their extreme right wing agenda. Their policies are a total failure but no matter, they are succeeding in their mission.

So a posh Tory boy government is going to spend taxpayers money in order to protect the leisure pursuit of their posh Tory boy friends?

Shock horror.

Next you'll be telling me they are cutting public services and privatising the NHS to pay off debts the banks ran up.

We need the pheasant shoots,so that we can sell expensive 4 wheel drive cars ( the Chelsea taxi ) and Barber jackets to toffee nosed twits,that fire shot guns that cant miss the bird due to its wide spread of pellats

Why is the RSPB not stepping in, oh i forgot nothing in this world matters where money and businesses come,people are killed the UN is silent so russia and china can sell weopans to them,dolphins whales and sharks are killed to keep japan happy,animals are killed to make way for timber and livestock man is the scum of the earth and is not fit to be upon it.

June, just in reply to your comment, and further to my own earlier on, you're absolutely correct - but what makes the whole thing very wrong in my eyes is that these breeders and landowners want protection for their pheasants once they have been released! They artificially increase the population of pheasants in the countryside - around the areas where they and their clients shoot - to make better "sport", ensuring all participants will go home with good bag of game at the end of the day. People pay a huge amount to shoot, and yet they don't treat it as a sport - if it was, they would actually have to do some hunting to FIND a pheasant! (Not my thing, by the way, but I'm fairly tolerant of others' hobbies.....or try to be.)
If landowners choose to run a business this way, they are taking the chance that they will lose some birds, as they are increasing the food source for predator animals. From my experience of living in the area of three separate shooting estates the biggest killer is traffic! Around the release points there are young pheasants splattered all over the road, every day.
I will watch the development of this issue with interest - and probablt dismay - but it would be good if public opinion could sway this decision, as it did with the proposal to sell off England's public forests.

Could this be any more biased? #uote "The 2011 national gamekeepers organisation survey found that 76% of respondents thought buzzards had a harmful effect on pheasant shoots". Wow, that is the most unbelievable and shocking news I've ever read (sarcasm). 76% of the losers sad enough to respond to a survey sent to people who;
a)breed pheasants and
b)had too little else to do that they ended up reading and responding to said survey.....
Thought that buzzards had a negative impact on pheasant shoots!
Amazing, I'd never have predicted that result (more sarcasm). Well, at least 24% of respondents aren't completely stupid then (not sarcasm).
The idea is to preserve natural wildlife isn't it? Get a grip DEFRA. You've really lost the plot on this one. How about you spend the £375,000 on upping security around the pooe defenceless cannon-fodder... Sorry... baby pheasants instead of affecting the future of our protected species.

Some interesting comments posted. I am surprised no one has mentioned the hunting with dogs ban as a comparison with rearing birds for shooting.
If people have such an insatiable urge to shoot something out of the sky, what is wrong with clay pigeon shooting,no loss of life involved.Oh silly me let's think how many jobs would be lost, that didn't stop the hunting ban though did it?
If left to itself nature would find an optimum level for most types of wildlife, not just birds.As mentioned earlier there is a natural food chain, unfortunately man has intervened and many of the original habitats have been adversely affected, this is the case with rearing of pheasants etc on which the birds of prey feast. If the numbers were more natural there wouldn't be enough food to sustain a large number of predators.If man hadn't used damaging chemicals and machinery on farms more birds would be about eating seeds and thriving in the hedgerows many of which are butchered by farmers at the wrong time of year,and ground nesting birds would be more numerous. The list is endless.
One final comment; as with many other aspects of rural life the majority in government seem to be oblivious to rural affairs. They live and work in their ivory towers and are fed information by people who can shout loudest.DEFRA doesn't always know best but sadly is the department to which the government will listen.